Thursday, June 07, 2007

Pollard Wants Big 12 Pie Divided Equally

Think being a member of a Bowl Championship Series conference means sharing the wealth equally? Think again. Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard is upset with the way the Big 12 divides its television revenue.

At the conclusion of the recent Big 12 meetings in Colorado Springs, Pollard urged his fellow athletic directors to split the revenue equally among members, much like the way business is conducted in the Big Ten.

Pollard appears to have a point. The Omaha World-Herald obtained the Big 12's most recent Internal Revenue Service filings from 2005-06. It showed that Texas was allocated the most money from TV revenue ($9.68 million). Kansas State received the least ($6.47 million). That's a top-to-bottom gap of $3.21 million.

"You're only as good as your weakest link," Pollard said.

The reason for the difference is that only half of Big 12 TV revenue is divided equally. The other half is put in an "appearance pool." Teams earn units of credit for every football TV appearance and for basketball nonconference TV games.

Pollard, who came to Iowa State from Wisconsin, says the Big 12 system is broke and needs to be fixed. He says the Big Ten's decision to share equally has helped build it into the premier league in the country.

"That is a big reason that they have grown their brand as strong as they have," he said.

At first I thought his idea made sense. But as someone else pointed out,

"If you add up those revenue totals for each school and divide by 12, ISU would have received 7.51 mil, compared to the 7.34 that they actually received. Texas could cut Jamie a check for $200k to shut him the F*ck up!"

the B12 has one of the worst TV contracts for a major league around. Only three league games shown during the conference season. And now we come to find out the games will be on FSN, ESPN, ABC, and VS.

I see what you are saying, with the only 200k difference. It may be 200k some years, some years more, some years less. But by doing this, we could strengthen the lesser revenue teams, which strengthens the overall conference.

By your calculations, Kansas would've received $1.04 million! If that can make that team stronger, then they too can get more games on TV, making the pot bigger, giving all teams a bigger share.